Skull and Shackles

to Scuttlecove

While we were heading back toward Farshore someone noticed smoke rising from the shore.
We went to investigate and found a burning Olman village, and some corpses peppered with arrowshafts. The arrows were of the type used by hellknights. We also found tracks heading off in two directions.

First we followed one set of tracks which led to a horde of shambling zombies. They were quickly dispatched. After this we returned to our ship and sailed it around the cape in an attempt to intercept the other group. On the other side of the camp we found a camp of Hellknights. they informed us their lictor was looking for us in another Olman village. So we set out for that place.

As I’d feared the hellknights had started ‘pacifying’ the local Olman tribes. But now their campaign was met with unexpected resistance. Hordes of undead were attacking day after day, instead of the one or two zombies they expected. The lictor wanted us to solve his problem. I went to chat with the leader of the village to see if I could find out what was going on. I managed to gain enough trust for her to tell me some of what was happening. Apparently when the ancient empire fell, and the gods went to sleep, a person emerged who tought the Olman how to summon their ancestors. And every generation all the villages send one member to one of the volcanoes inland where that same person teaches the the secrets. If I wanted more information, I had to go there and see if that person wanted to talk.

So we headed there. We located the cavern and inside we found a lich. That’s how after all this time it’s still the same person teaching the Olman the secrets of necromancy. We came to an agreement with this being. he gave us a ring that would allow him to controll the lictor, and he would order the rest of the legion to leave the island. The lictor would stay behind. We figured one life would be an acceptable price to free the rest of the Olman of this oppression. For some reason our blind companion insisted on being the one to trick the lictor into wearing this ring. her explanation was that I would have been ‘too obvious’. Go figure. But I was not about to argue with her. Surprisingly enough she pulled it off.

After this we returned to Farshore. I spent some time trying to figure out what to do next, but couldn’t find anything.
One night I woke up from noise down where the lizardfolk have their camp. I went to investigate and found a horde of apes attacking the lizardfolk. They were obviously forced to do this by magic. Martin was able to follow their tracks, and we found a single set of tracks arriving there. We followed it for some time, and then I got this feeling this was all a distraction. So all of us teleported to Lavinia’s mansion to find it on flame. We managed to extinguish the fire and found Lavinia gone. Martin, who had kept following the tracks to see if he could find more information, returned with the news that the tracks came from Vanthus’ grave, which was now empty.

Scrying revealed Lavinia in a cage, suspended above a pool of lava. She was obviously in another plane. We suspect she’s in Gaping Maw.

While we were still trying to figure out what to do about it we were contacted by the pirate woman we had saved in Kraken’s Cove. She had returned to the Crimson Fleet’s headquarters and found out Vanthus has risen in rank. He’s now second in command underneath captain Wyther. She wanted us to come to her place and work together in removing Vanthus. Naturally we came to an agreement.

Instead of sailing the Wyvern, which would take too much time and would be too obvious, we decided to teleport. So we used scrying on her, and teleported in. This saved us a lot of time.

She gave us a few options to try and get the location of the secret headquarters os Wyther. The most obvious choice for me was Porphyry House, the best brothel in Scuttlecove, ran by Tyralandi. She’s half nymph, half fiend. I disguised myself, and took Kayia along as muscle. We managed to get there without too much trouble. The only real thing we met on the way was a horny stormgiant who wanted to have some fun with us. I dominated him and told him to leave us alone. Perhaps I’ll be able to make use of him in the days to come.

I was able to have a chat with Tyralandi. I told her I’d heard she isn’t friends with the Crimson Fleet, and neither are we, and that we intend to take them on. She wanted to meet all of us, and extended invitations for a diner at her place that night. During the party she wanted to know who we are, so we told her. She gave us some information on captain Wyther in exchange for some hair from Martin. She was going to use the hair to create a homunculus. Some of her cliënts want to have sex with famous people. She also told us we would have to get into the yuan-ti assassins’ headquarters to find the exact location of Wyther’s place.